Trilogy
by Luke1
Summary: Updated Anew! In the days and months after the end of The Shadows Suit Me, Han, Luke, and Leia are all having trouble dealing with the changes in their lives, and they find the only thing that helps is each other. It's hard to trust, but it's worth it.
1. Trilogy

"I just wanna check on Luke," Han said softly to the woman who was still legally his wife, the woman who had delivered their daughter thirty-six hours ago, who now held her, wrapped in a white blanket. She had insisted of walking out of the Medical Center, saying that riding a repulser-chair made no sense to someone young and healthy, over a day after giving birth. She insisted she was fine, that she was only a little tired, and that she could make it to the speeder, for crying out loud. Han had learned long ago not to argue with her.

He could tell by the sudden longing that crossed her face that she wanted to see him, too, but she looked down at the baby and said, "Alright. I'll wait over there." She looked in the direction of a small sitting area full of cushioned chairs.

"I won't be long, babe," he said, biting his tongue at the _babe_. "Sorry."

She shook her head. "It's okay. Take as long as you need."

Han thought he'd seen Luke bad off yesterday. When he brought him to Medical Center, he'd been barely hanging on and getting worse. It was touch and go for awhile there, and then, eighteen hours later, when the kid'd finally woken up, he'd acted like his body was so heavy he couldn't even begin to move it. Apparently, he'd visited Leia in her room late last night, which Han found a bit hard to believe, seeing the shape he'd been in. How had he managed to walk that far?

Han wasn't ready for how badly off Luke was tonight.

He was still in intensive care, though they said they'd move him in a day or two to the mental health ward, and then in two more weeks to a rehabilitation clinic. The whole business gave Han the creeps-Luke in a metal ward?-but he supposed that really was the best place for a boy with an ixetal addiction, severe depression, and a history of suicide attempts. Besides, it was just for a few days, just until they were sure he was physically well enough to be moved.

He asked a droid how he was doing on his way to the room. "As well as can be expected, General Solo," the medical droid replied eloquently. "His body seems to be ridding itself of the toxins rather quickly."

When he opened the door to Luke's room, and saw him curled into a ball, shivering, almost convulsing, he realized that the droid had spoken from a mechanical perspective. To Han's eyes, Luke was in fact, getting rid of the toxins quickly, and his body hated him for it.

He could hear his labored breath from the doorway. He shut the door, unsure what to do or say.

"Go away!" Luke's weak voice snapped with as much volume and spite as he was capable of at the moment.

"It's me, kid," Han said softly. In the old days, Luke had always been able to sense his presence. The drugs had probably dulled that ability of his, however.

His head shot up and he looked at Han, his eyes glassy and huge and sunken, glowing bright blue, feverishly, angry and pained tears stuck to light brown eyelashes. His face was pale and lifeless, and the circles under his eyes were so dark they almost looked like bruises. If Han had thought he looked bad before, this was a hundred times worse. "Han," he said in acknowledgment.

"Yeah. What's up?"

"I…." he attempted, faltered, curled back up with his head buried in the pillow. "I want to get out of here," came his muffled voice.

"I know, Luke. You gotta stay."

"No…. You don't understand. You don't know how much this _hurts_!" He sobbed into the pillow, uncontrollable, venomously angry, helpless sobs, chocking on them, hyperventilating.

Han decided he didn't care what anyone, including Luke, thought. He wasn't gonna watch this anymore. He lied behind Luke in his medical bed and put his arms around him tightly, giving him his warmth, his stillness, his strength, his calm. He took the smaller, lifeless hands in his, squeezing, holding on. He found himself saying comforting things, over and over: "It's gonna be okay. You just gotta breathe. Breathe slow. You're gonna make it."

It took a long time, but the shaking slowed and stopped. He started breathing normally. He relaxed into Han's arms. Han couldn't believe how small and weak he was, and suddenly felt even more protective. He'd seen Luke's chart and read how little he weighed. Now he believed it.

"I'm gonna die," the boy whispered, sounding scared.

"They ain't gonna let you die, kid."

"I've never gone more than two days. Not in years…."

"You're gonna go a lot longer than two days."

"I don't want this. I want to go home-!"

Han hushed him as his voice started to break with panic. "You're gonna stay put. It's gonna get easier."

"You don't know that."

He hushed him again, holding him tighter. Eventually, he fell asleep, exhausted from the episode. Han didn't leave until he was sure he could do so without waking him up.

At home, Leia put the baby to sleep. Han went for the liquor cabinet before deciding that him drinking while Luke was in that bed feeling like he might die was hypocritical. Or something. He sat on the couch in the main room, lost in thought, until Leia came in. "She's asleep," she said dreamily. New baby. It was magical.

He wished it could have come at a time when he wasn't preoccupied by Luke's addiction. He smiled up at her, but didn't answer.

"How bad is he?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"I think he was using pretty damn heavily for years," he murmured. "I'm glad you didn't see him. He's in a lot of pain."

Leia blinked, and her eyes came away glassier. "I wish there was some way to make it easier for him."

"Yeah."

She sighed, looked longingly at Han, and turned and walked away.

Han followed her into the room that used to be theirs. She was lying on their bed, curled up in a ball on her right side, her head buried in the pillow. She was in the exact same position that Luke had been.

Han learned long ago to stop being surprised when things like this happened. Their family did weird things like that. Especially Luke and Leia. Before he could second-guess himself, he took off his boots and spooned up behind her as he had Luke earlier, taking her hands, being her strength. "He's gonna be okay," he whispered. "He's gotta go through hell before he gets better."

"I know," she said softly. She wouldn't cry, he knew. She hardly ever did. "It's just so much at one."

"Yeah," he said. "Sweetheart…we can wait to split up. We're smart and close enough to know where we stand. I can stick around, and we can do it when we're ready. When things settle back down." It sounded stupid in its blatant unconventionality to his own ears, but he knew what he meant, and he thought she must, too.

"I don't know, Han. It would just be drawing out something painful."

He still loved her. And he wanted to hold her like this for the rest of his life. But he had been the first to admit, almost a year ago, that it wasn't working. Mylia was the product of their lasting denial, their well-meaning insistence that they could still have a happy marriage. He loved her, but he didn't want this. He hadn't in a long time.

Wanted her, but not this. What the hell did that mean?

She was right, it was too much at once.

The next morning, Leia went to see Luke. She found him curled up in a ball, shaking. He looked physically like she felt emotionally. But when she lied down before him, he opened his eyes, and looked relieved. He put his arms around her, and his trembling stopped, and his breathing slowed. And Leia's broken heart was still broken, but for a little while, it didn't hurt quite as badly.


	2. Hospital

Note: Okay, it wasn't a one-shot, but all of these chapters were written the same day, in a bout of insanity and confusion and caffeine abuse. They all kinda stand alone, in that you need to read Shadows to know what's going on, and they're in chronological order, but they're not really chapters of the same story. They're more like companion pieces. It may be that none of them make any sense, but I decided recently that I didn't want to ever have a piece that I considered finished that I didn't put out there. Not everything I write needs to be the best thing I've written, which doesn't mean I don't have to hold myself to a standard-but why write something that no one ever reads? I'm not going to just put out anything, but since the few people who reviewed part 1 seemed to like it, then…hey, here you go….

"I don't like it here," he says, and I can't tell if he's mad at me or himself or the other patients. "I'm not crazy."

I give him a lame smile. "Luke..."

"Han, I'm _not_!" He grinds a stick out angrily. "I know I have some pretty serious emotional problems, but I'm not…." He sighs. "I have a firm grasp on reality."

That's sure a matter of opinion. I've heard him go on about how he's guilty for _something_ I can't get him to explain, how his whole life was planned out before he was born, and other weird, delusional stuff. Sure, he doesn't see things that aren't there like some of these people. He doesn't kill baby animals for fun. He doesn't have screaming fits and need to be tied down. But he's still crazy. Gods fucking know it's a kind that don't make him dangerous, except to himself, and if it weren't for the spice it might not have even gotten in the way of his life a whole lot. But the fact is, it did. So the theory is, we get Luke clean and get him therapy, and he can act like a normal person, even if his particular brand of crazy never goes away. He can make it day to day, which I guess is a lot more than you can expect for a lot of the people in here. Some of them haven't spoken in twenty years. Some of them can't speak without insulting someone. Some of them speak to imaginary friends. Luke just speaks like someone in a bad mood, all the time. If there's such thing as a "normal kind of crazy," I think this might be it.

Luke lights another soft stick with trembling hands, seconds after finishing the last one. I guess it's how he's dealing with withdrawal. He's actually doing a lot better. A week ago he could barely stop tearing at the sheets and sobbing, it hurt so bad to be sober. His body was punishing him for years of abuse, and then suddenly taking away the spice that he'd begun to need to even feel alive. Then one day, the real bad part was over, and now he's just sad and weak and pissed as hell, his fingers shaking slightly as he chain-smokes, his eyes still sunken and dim but at least they're dry. He's been able to sit up and to walk short distances, and he seems to spend most of his time in the game room of the mental ward, the only place they'll let him smoke. He knows he's going to be hardly allowed to smoke at all when he goes to the rehabilitation clinic, so I think he's trying to take advantage of it while he can, which is really only gonna make it harder when he has to cut back. "What?" he asks, meeting my eyes. "You don't think so?"

I sigh, "Kid…I think…I think there are a lot of different ways to be crazy."

He clenches his jaw. "Yeah, well…. I'm not saying I'm not depressed. But I don't belong here."

"You'll be out soon."

He smirks. "And then I'll have a whole building full of drug addicts to deal with. Which will be a lot better."

"They'll be people who can relate to what you're going through."

"I don't like _people_."

I laugh openly. Sometimes he says weird, angry, hostile things that have got to be ironic because who would say something like that in all seriousness? I don't know if he's trying to be funny. Maybe he's aware of the ridiculousness, but he goes ahead and says it anyway.

He looks at me with a frown, out of the corner of his eye, looking bothered by the fact that I'd laugh at his misfortune. He holds onto the frown as long as he can, taking a drag and blowing the smoke out, but then a hesitant smile pulls at his mouth. Yeah, he knows.

And damn, it is so good to know he has a sense of humor, even if it is dark.


	3. Birthday

He holds a smoldering stick of barren, soft spice between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. He doesn't use his right hand for much of anything, anymore. He'd always been borderline ambidextrous, shooting with his right hand but eating with his left, writing with usually his right, though occasionally switching…. She'd always thought it was strange, but since Bespin, she wondered if something in his genes or subtle body had known about his eventual injury and been preparing him for it. What had been one of Luke's many had proved, as many of his others had, an asset.

His fingers aren't trembling, which is good, but he stares wearily into nothing, only moving to take drags from the stick, which he does with repetition and a bit too much urgency to be commonplace. A very mild stimulant, it's the only drug they'll allow him in the clinic, save caf, and they regulate his intake of both. Two cups of caf, three sticks a day. He can't even have pain meds when he gets headaches. Leia knows he's constantly angry about it, but that he savors whatever he can get, even if it is only the caf and the soft sticks.

She shifts her two-month-old daughter to her other arm and walks across the clinic garden to her ex-husband, the man who might be her friend and might be more, but for now is a complete stranger, for all their history and mutual affection. The Luke she knew smiled, and had expressive eyes.

The eyes that look up into hers are darkened with sadness to a dull grey-most of the time, but not all, because their color changes still seem to want to convey what their expressions do not-and empty. His face doesn't even show that he recognizes her. His white tunic and pants look out of place on him, now, as she seems to have gotten used to seeing him in black. Once upon a time, he wore a white wrap tunic like that. He wore it like he didn't know what he was wearing, with reckless abandon and no concept on which to even begin to build an understanding of fashion. Now he's so self-conscious, he probably knows exactly what he's wearing, and resents it quietly, and deeply.

He takes one last long pull from the stick and puts it out in an ashtray on a faux stone table. He carefully blows out the smoke in the opposite direction from Leia and Mylia, saying, "Hey," a bit sullenly when they get closer.

Leia smiles carefully. "Happy birthday."

He must be in a particularly bad mood, if he's not even going to give her a hint of an ironic smile at that. His face doesn't change at all. After a moment, he says, "I'm not sure about that."

"That it's happy?"

"Yeah." He sighs. After a moment, he looks back at Leia, and the little bundle in her arms. "Can I hold her?" he asks as if he thinks he will be refused.

And her instinct _is_ to refuse him, but instead she smiles gently and passes the baby to his lap, and he holds her so she can sit up, and looks in awe at her wide, half-focused eyes. The girl seems to see him, and looks back, and for whatever reason gives him the hint of a toothless smile.

And how could Luke not smile at that?


	4. Relax

"I'm gonna fucking _kill_ him!"

"Han, you are going to wake up the children, and then _I_ am going to kill_ you_." Leia growls in a low, dead-serious voice. "I _do not_ want the boys to know anything's wrong, do you hear me? And Mylia cried for _two hours_ before I got her to go down, so if you wake her up, I'm throwing you off the balcony." She brushes past me in a breeze of white silk, and I hook my thumbs in my belt, thinking real hard, my heart still pounding from the shock.

"I don't think that place is helping him any," I say softly as I follow her. She peeks into the baby's room, and I hoover behind her. "He's real depressed in there-"

"He's always depressed!" She whispers vehemently, turning, closing the door to My's room. "When we met him, he was depressed about Kenobi and his aunt and uncle. When he and I were first together, he was depressed about being responsible for the Death Star and…about how I got pregnant with Ben. Later he was depressed about you. He always finds something, Han. All we can do is take care of him and hope it's enough."

"It ain't enough! Leia-"

"_Luke is a drug addict_, Han," she says firmly. "He's going to do things like this because he doesn't know how to stop himself. We're doing all we can."

"We are _not _doing all we can! You're just saying that 'cause you don't know how to fucking deal with this, so you're acting like it's out of your hands." I find my boots on the floor near the door and pull them on. "If he still thinks the only way out is to overdose, and if he can fucking _get drugs_ to try to do that with in that clinic, then he don't belong there."

"Where are you going?"

"To get him out."

"He's not ready to leave! He'll relapse if he's out, and he needs to be monitored while he recovers from the overdose-!"

"I'll fucking take care of him. He'll be better off with me than there."

"They're not going to release him in the shape he's in!"

"We'll see about that!"

I don't tell the clinic people why I'm here except to visit Luke, and they lead me to his new private room. "Private room?" I ask, suspicious. He used to have two roommates. Supposed to be good for them to not be alone.

"He's not allowed to interact with the other patients until we're sure he's more emotionally stable," a medical droid informs me. I hope that was a decision that was made by a real medic and not a fucking machine.

"Whatd'ya mean?"

"Mister Skywalker was offered the medication he consumed by another patient."

"Then it's that guy's fault! Not Luke's! Luke's hurting for spice so bad, you can't expect him to turn it down!"

"The other patient is similarly not allowed to communicate with his peers, nor is he to be given any more medication except under close observation."

"What the hell'd he take?"

"Mister Skywalker? Five doses of antipsychotics."

"What's that even do to someone who don't need it?"

"I fear no one needs a quintuple dose of anything, General. But in the case of someone with Skywalker's brain chemistry, it did little more than cause him to lose consciousness. There is still some in his system, and it is causing him anxiety and restlessness."

I think again, _I'm gonna kill him._

I open the door to Luke's room, and find him pacing.

I sigh in relief, so fucking glad he isn't in bed, so sick from the overdose that he can't move. Like last time. Now I'm really gonna kill him, since he's in good enough shape to take it. He pauses to look at me, and all he says is, "Han, I really need a stick but they won't give me one."

"What, you want them to be on _me_? You already have yours for today?"

"No, they won't give me _any_. They're trying to punish me."

"Yeah, well, you fucking deserve it."

He glares at me for a moment, then resumes pacing.

"What the fuck were you thinking, Luke?" I say, sitting in the only chair in the room. "You took _five_ _antipsychotics_?"

He laughs. He _laughs_. "Well, you know…if Chrol wants to hear music that isn't there, and he wants to give his pills to me instead…."

"Luke, you're not even _fucking trying_!" I stand up and push my chair over, hard, making as much noise as I can. He starts, stares at me with wide eyes. I grab his shoulders and make him look at me. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Of…of course…."

"Do you realize that to get out of here, you have to get clean and stop doing _stupid_ shit like this?"

He blinks. "Yeah, Han…."

"Then what gives?"

He shrugs helplessly. His voice is weak and childlike. "I…."

"This ain't cute. It ain't funny. And I ain't happy."

Shrugging my hands off his shoulders, he says, "You know what, Han? A couple weeks ago, when you told me that there are 'a lot of different ways to be crazy?' Well, you were right. And maybe I'm a kind of crazy where I'll take any drugs I can get and I don't even know why. Maybe I don't _want_ to get better. Maybe I want to hurt myself more than I want even wake up in the morning, and maybe there's nothing anyone can do about it."

"What about Ben and Anakin?" I ask.

He stops pacing again, pausing to take some uneasy breaths. "They're better off without me," he growls at last, turning to the dark window.

"You don't mean that."

I step up beside him, and offer him a stick. He sighs loudly and accepts it. "Thank you," he breathes, lighting it, taking a long drag.

I lay a palm on his back, and he looks up at me. "You need to get better for the boys," I remind him. "Now stop acting like a jerk and taking stupid drugs."

He nods. "Yeah. I know…."

He knows I love him. Gods, how I fucking love him. No matter how mad he makes me. I dunno how many chances I'm gonna give him, but probably way more than he deserves. Ever since I met him, I ain't been the same. I rub my hand over the tense muscles in his back, and he closes his eyes. I can't believe for a minute that he's responding well to touch-he usually only does that when he's feeling really sick, like right after he got to the hospital-and I say, "Like that?"

He turns a little pink. "Yeah," he admits, trying to sound like he doesn't really care.

"Your muscles are like duracrete-"

"Kinda hard for me to relax, Han."

"Yeah…." I move and stand behind him, kneading his shoulders with both hands, gentle enough to not worry about hurting his fragile body. He sighs and seems to relax a bit.

This could be good. "Put that thing out and sit down on the bed."

He stiffens again. "Will you give me another one?"

"Sure. But I promise you'll feel better if you let me work on your back a minute."

He listens. He never does that. "Do you want me to lie down?"

That seems too intimate. "Nah, just sit at the edge." I kick off my boots and sit behind him with my legs up under me, and he tries to sit straight and give me a good angle.

"I don't know where you learn to do this stuff."

"What stuff?"

"You know, all the random stuff you can do. This, and cooking, and the tattoo thing."

"Anyone with half a brain can cook."

He snorts. He can't cook worth a damn.

I smile. "And tattoos are easy. You just need ink and a pin." I pull down the back of the neck of his tunic a bit and look at his tattoo for the first time in over eight years. It's really small, on his right shoulder blade just below his neck, about three centimeters across. It's a little Alliance Starbird in black ink. We'd known each other about a month when he found out I could do them and asked me. I remember putting the ink on the pin and saying, "You're sure, right? This don't come off."

"I'm sure," he'd insisted, looking up at me through too much gold hair, lying flat on his stomach with his shirt off, his head nestled in the triangle of his folded arms.

"Maybe you should go to a real artist."

"I want _you_ to do it."

It'd turned out real clean, and it still has the good, think, precise lines I'd managed to give it. I rub my thumb over it. "Still looks good. You realize it's over ten years old now?"

He laughs. Genuinely. "Gods, Han, _don't_ say that!"

"Ever get any others?"

"Never wanted any others." He says it like it really means something.

I smile to myself and rub his shoulders some more, and his muscles start to melt under my fingers.

"Are you still mad at me?" he asks softly. I'm surprised he cares.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

An apology. For his self-destructive behavior. That sure never happens. "Don't do it again."

"Okay."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

I wrap my arms around his shoulders from behind and squeeze. "You ever feel like you're gonna do something like that, call me instead."

"Okay," he breathes, and I believe him. Sighing, he wraps his arms around mine, and we hold each other. "I don't like it here, Han."

"I know. I don't either. It's fucking creepy."

"Yeah. And I just keep extending my sentence by…screwing up."

"You gotta stay here until you're well enough to leave," I say, surprised I'm not dragging him out like I'd come here to do. "But believe me, kid: as soon as you're done with detox, I'm getting you outta here."

"Detox isn't the only part of rehab."

"You can do the rest outpatient. And I'll keep an eye on you. Promise."

He nods, squeezing my arms. "I know."

"You gotta get better for me, though."

"I will."

And I believe him. Again, like all the other times, I believe him.


	5. Someplace Warm

I used to figure that whatever people did was their own business. That's why I never had a problem with smuggling the stuff. It weren't my problem if someone did stupid shit like spice, it was theirs. Not like I've never done it. That was a long time ago, though, when I was a kid, before I went to the academy, before I knew better. And it was only a couple times, and I didn't let it take me over. I guess I knew that there were people who got real addicted, people who needed it to keep going, but I didn't care. Like I was gonna be the one to tell them to stop. Well, I'm still not. It's still their business. But if I could go back, and re-think having a hand in getting it to them, I wouldn't take the job. 'Cause of Luke.

One day he asks me if I ever used it. He's got this big blue eyed innocent look on his face, like a little kid, like a farm boy, but I ain't fooled. He's in rehab, for hell's sake. He ain't innocent no more. But when he talks to me, sometimes he looks it. I dunno, maybe he still looks up to me, even after bein' so mad at me for so long. I dunno. Maybe he thinks lookin' at me like that is gonna get some kinda extra sympathy or something. You know, pull at my heart-strings. Well, it does, but I wouldn't ever tell him so, or let on. It kinda breaks my heart, 'cause I wish he was still the boy I'd...well, really liked during the war. Okay, I loved him. Still do. Like more than a kid brother. But he ain't the same person anymore, and I'm still trying to figure out if he's even still someone I want to be close to. One thing's for sure though-I want, need him to get better, so I can stop worrying. After that, I don't know. But I'm gonna be here every day 'til he can take care of himself again. Not like I got anything else to do, anyway. Being around Leia and the kids, what with the divorce pending, ain't want I want right now.

I should tell him the truth, I guess. I mean, why would I lie? My first instinct is to do just that, though, and I think it's 'cause he looks so young in his white patients robes that wrap around him like a Tatooinian tunic. He and Anakin got the same eyes, and I've been the only dad that Anakin's ever really had, and when that kid looks at me like his father's doing, I always want to lie so I don't ruin him. So that his eyes will stay that innocent. But Luke's not a kid anymore. I should know that by now.

But he really doesn't look any older than he did during the war. He doesn't. He looks sick and tired and way too skinny-even for him and he's always been skinny-and his hair all short like that still throws me off sometimes when I look at him and expect to see bangs in his eyes. He looks different, and he looks...frankly, worse. But no older. It's real weird, but I guess he's always looked young. Hard to believe he's twenty-nine. Thirty next month. He's older'n I was when we met.

"Yeah," I say real noncommittal like, like ain't a big deal.

He nods. "When you were smuggling it?"

"You know what kind of bad idea that would be? Naw, it was when I was a teenager. In Coronet."

"Oh," he says, frowning a little like he's thinking. "You never really told me about your childhood, Han."

"Sure I did. Orphan. Orphanage. Got into lots of trouble. That's about it."

"That's not much of a description."

"That's all there was."

"But how old were you?"

"When I did spice? Like seventeen. It wasn't that big of a deal. All the street kids in Coronet do it. Or did, back then. Dunno about now."

"They...they still do. Or did...six years ago," Luke says like he's scared to admit how much he knows.

I nod grimly. "Ya been, huh?"

"Yeah," he says hoarsely. "It's where I... I was only twenty-three at the time. It isn't just the street kids, you know, Han. There's a whole subculture there built on it."

"That's where you first did it, wasn't it?"

He doesn't answer. Instead he turns and faces the window, the grey skies and pouring spring rain. His eyes look real grey, too. Probably the reflection.

"I wasn't me when I was with them," he volunteers after so long, that he could have been talking about something else altogether. It's actually kinda weird that he would go back to the same topic, and if we hadn'ta been talking about something so important, I mighta forgot who "them" was supposed to be. "And that was what I wanted."

I nod again. I never know what to say to him when he talks like that. Sometimes I want to smack him and tell him to stop acting so damn sullen all the time. Sometimes I wanna hold him and tell him that that part of his life is over and he don't gotta worry about it anymore. Sometimes I just wanna give up. I'm here every day, though, for whatever reason. I'm here right after I take his sons to school, 'cause I think he likes having me here. He hasn't said so, though. Maybe I'm just hoping I'm not wasting my time. He's still so angry, so lost, so dark-I don't know what to make of him.

"Anyway," Luke sighs, but doesn't follow it with anything, just dismissing what he'd been talking about. I dunno if I want to know what happened while he was away. For all I know, he coulda been screwing Corellian pushers for spice. Or maybe he was doing a legit job to get it, I dunno. Maybe things really weren't that bad 'til lately. He said four years, though. He said it had been four years since he'd been able to go without it. "Maybe more," he'd added like it didn't matter either way.

Well, it fucking matters to me. I never knew where in hell he was all that time, but I never once thought that he coulda been smoking spice with Coronet street kids to forget it all. Maybe he was living on the street. Maybe he was fucking dealers. Maybe he wasn't doing any of those things-maybe he was alone and depressed the whole time. I don't know where I thought he was, but I guess I thought he'd moved on. Not like in a healthy way, really, but sure not like this. I guess I thought maybe he'd go back to Tatooine, and be a farmer. Or a mechanic. Or maybe fly commercially. Maybe he'd change his name, or something. I didn't think he'd lose sight of the boy I'd loved so completely.

But he's safe now. And he went to rehab, not kicking and screaming, but willingly. And he's getting better. Kinda.

"This has got to be the wettest spring," he murmurs with a sad smile as he watches the rain hit his window.

That's it.

"So we'll go someplace," I offer, not really having a plan yet, but sure that this is my chance to get away from the whole situation with Leia, Luke's chance to really get better, and mine and his chance to figure out if we can still be friends.

His blue eyes-'cause they look bluer when he takes them away from the window-look up at me. He's sitting up in bed, blankets wrapped around him, but I'm standing 'cause I can't sit still in this place. Makes me nervous. He's barely strong enough to get out of bed, and he's always saying he'd cold. If he'd fucking eat something maybe he'd put on some weight and that would sure as hell help, but it's more than that. It's also the withdrawal, and more'n even that. Back during the war, Luke'd always be turing up the temp on the environmental controls on the Falcon and in his and Leia's room, saying that if it was below twenty-nine, he was uncomfortable. And the clinic keeps all the rooms right at twenty-two on the dot, and they won't listen to me that Luke really does need it warmer. He'd a desert boy, for hell's sake. He grew up where it was upwards of thirty-five every day.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"Let's get off Coruscant. Go someplace warm."

He smiles genuinely, but there's still sadness behind it, and he looks pretty weak. "I can't go anywhere, Han. I can hardly walk the withdrawal's so bad..."

"You've been here a month, kid. Couple more weeks, an' you'll be good as new," I say with confidence I really don't have. But there's one thing I know and that's that I gotta get Luke out of here if he's gonna get better. They treat him like he's nuts here. I mean, I don't think too highly of Luke's emotional health, but it ain't like he's insane. He's just depressed. He needs fresh, warm air and sunshine and some peace and quiet. So do I.

"I dunno, Han," he murmurs. "I don't feel like I'm getting any better..."

The medics say he still don't sleep or eat much. He's lost weight since he's got here, even though they've been doing everything short of IVs and force-feeding him to try to bring it up. When he got here, he weighed fifty-three kilos. Now it's fifty-two. And it's not like he's ever been big, but even for someone one-point-seven meters tall, that ain't right. It worries me like fucking crazy. Some people die going through withdrawal. If Luke goes, I know it'll be from not eating. He's got dark circles under his eyes and he sometimes starts trembling for no reason. "I know," I say. "'N'that's why you gotta get outta this clinc."

Luke shakes his head insistently, his eyes glassing over. I've seen him cry more times since he's gone into rehab than I did the whole rest of the time I knew him put together. "If I leave, I'll just start using it again-I know I will-"

"I won't let you, kid," I insist, sitting next to him on the bed. Through this whole thing, I've needed to be the one holding him together. Leia hardly ever comes to see him, and even if she did, they're still scared of each other. He needs someone acting like everything's gonna be okay, and like they really can and will take care of him. I have no idea if I can, but he needs to think so. And I know for damn sure that I can take care of him better'n the clinic has. They think he's crazy. I know he ain't. "We'll go someplace nice and quiet, lots of sun, room service..."

He smiles hesitantly. There was a time that Luke jumped at the mention of room service, back when he was a kid and everything was exciting and new, plus the fact that he always seemed to be hungry. "Quiet," he repeats like he don't know the word. "I have quiet-but not..."

"What? What do you want?"

"Calm. Safe."

"You'll get that, then," I promise.

His eyes show that he isn't ready to believe me, and he looks at me for a long moment, weighing my intentions. "I guess…." he murmurs.


End file.
